Blood And Rhetoric
by DagonSt
Summary: Grantaire meets Montparnasse, for a few drabbles' worth of strangeness. Updated Sept. 2010.
1. What Keeps A Man Alive

It was probably a noise that prompted him to turn and, standing there in the mouth of the alley, he had just the light to see a prone figure and a flash of the red fresh blood leaves on a knife-blade. A blank look from the youth in the neat coat who rises from the corpse, replacing his hat. The look was near enough to shock that he found himself asking, "should I go for help?" Though indeed the absinthe had left him none too steady on his feet.

The youth laughed, his smile blade-thin, sparing of noise and gesture. "Monsieur, I have killed him."

Grantaire was too drunk to be astonished. It had been a knife after all. "Ah, the impertinence of youth. Do you need help yourself, then?" Squinting past the bloodstained glove and gentleman's clothing and dark hair one might almost see a boy with hair like a golden halo, whose arrogance had some truth behind it. If one were predisposed to do so and nearly blind with night and drink. Grantaire tried to smile at it and cursed sentimentality.

When he let his vision clear the boy was regarding him with a scowl that was something like the other's, and the idea that he was standing in an alleyway after midnight being glared at by Enjolras's reflection was dreadfully amusing. His laugh was no more pleasant than the fledgling horror's had been. "Indulge me. I've nothing of value, as it happens." Enjolras had already pronounced him incapable of death, and so he had nothing to worry about. He'll see, perhaps...

The glare fixing him now was more wary than Enjolras had ever thought to be. "Do you believe in ghosts, young citizen," he pressed anyway. "I believe you belong to a friend of mine." There must have been quite a lot of alcohol - and associated substances - in his veins for him to stand so calmly talking to this creature, much less to think of bringing him back to the Musain. 'Behold, here is one worse than I! Enjolras, he partly resembles you.' The boy's coat is the same cut, that's all it is.

"I believe you are drunk," came the disdainful reply. Grantaire laughed again because to be lectured to by this! A pretty boy with a bloodstained knife. When he stopped this time, leaning against one of the walls to stay on his feet, both were closer.

"Of course I am - what else is there to be?" And now the boy was past him and looking nervously along the street. Grantaire squinted to see as well. "Yes, yes, it's clear - run along now. The moon's too full for the likes of you to be about." That earned him another blank stare that, had he been more sober, might have been intimidating.

He himself turned, and without looking to see if the assassin followed, continued his unsteady path to his flat. "Shall I tell your fortune, boy? Simple enough, when you know the source... your name is Misfortune - for some poor soul, anyway. Your father is Paris, your mother France. You fight the complacency and common stupidity of the people, have a grave enemy in the State, and will have some acquaintance with paving-stones. Bloodying them, not tearing them up... And you will die, my friend, too young and too foolish to know any better; and who will be left to mourn you?"

He paused at his door, simultaneously leaning on it and trying to fit the key to the lock. "And the thing is," he muttered to the empty hallway, "neither of you _listen_." And the door opened to his clumsy grasp and deposited him on the floor of the room, where he shook his head and, kicking the door closed, curled up to sleep it off.


	2. Bloodletting

Grantaire arose at dusk. When he looked back, that occurrence seemed to him a premonition of the entire calamity. The sun his Calpurnia, the Musain his Capitol, knives wielded by ungrateful children: his rhetoric will flow along this course if he ever becomes so besotted by drink as to reveal it at all.

Several games of billiards eased him into the day, and it was dark before he ventured to the Musain for dinner. That still made him earlier than any of the other 'Amis de l'ABC' save Enjolras, who bent over a notebook to avoid speaking to him. Grantaire already felt himself half invisible, having missed the day entirely, and took it upon himself to reassure both himself and Enjolras of his presence.

He pulled out a chair opposite Enjolras and proceeded to cheerfully call down the wrath of Apollo upon himself. It was something to do, and Enjolras was quite a vision, furious. But a heretic voice intruded on the charming tirade, thinking it 'merely thunder in a summer sky: stunning, but without effect.' Grantaire was all astonishment: the voice was his own. Enjolras too stood amazed, and sat back as though a viper had lunged at him from under a grape-vine. That sudden alarm struck Grantaire with more force than any bolt of lightning. He stammered an apology, but Enjolras had already gone.

That expression! Two hours and as many bottles left him in a foul mood indeed, as the conversations swirled around and over him. His contrition soured into a restless discontent, and he let his chair scrape noisily as he stood, abandoning the Amis long before Enjolras could finish describing the evening's castle in the air.

_ _ _

A man ran.

He moved in violation of the oldest law on walking away from a crime, which is to walk. Someone had seen him with the corpse, someone in blue who had grabbed at his coat and ripped the seam he hadn't had time to have mended properly. Heedless of the advice of centuries of urban parasites, Montparnasse - nineteen and successful after his inclination - rounded a fifth corner at a dead run, the law too close behind him for discretion.

A knot of students fluttering between cheap restaurants and wine-shops offered anonymity at last, though the thief did not quite dare to enter any of the establishments. Tinderboxes all of them, and had one door apiece. He still had some luck: he had not dropped the purse. That slipped into one pocket, and another produced a pair of blue-tinted spectacles. His coat looked more respectable folded over his arm, hiding his knife-hand in case he had not shaken the pursuit after all.

Amongst their own kind, students spoke a language that was neither common French, nor argot as Montparnasse understood it. Their nonsense recalled that of the fool who not a month ago had greeted him as a comrade before he'd washed away the blood, and led him as far as the doorstep before passing out drunk. Such a madman might afford him asylum for the day, or a glass of cheap wine; he felt himself very much in need of both.

He surfaced some time later and some distance away, spectacles askew. His step faltered slightly and listed first towards the street, then back. His jacket, like the glasses, was only tenuously attached to his person, draped over one arm and hand. One sleeve escaped him and trailed along in the dust. Once he tripped over it, stumbling into a lamp-post. No-one noted, or cared, that he did not smell of liquor. In this manner, he proceeded to the drunkard's flat.

_ _ _

The door opened at Grantaire's touch but he thought nothing of it before seeing the intruder on his bed. The youth sat cross-legged, in his shirt-sleeves, and was carving a stick of wood to splinters with a long knife. The wood had come from Grantaire's door-frame, and the man was Montparnasse.

Engaged in the destruction of the wood, Montparnasse scarcely acknowledged the door. The wood was unvarnished, its grain rough and pronounced and his knife too unwieldy for delicate work. He had meant to make a rose, as a love-token to some girl, but that seemed unlikely now and he swept the wood-shavings to the floor impatiently.

Grantaire had only just fled the Musain, but even here he could not escape Enjolras's manners and his look. And this boy already had blood on his hands. He should have been horrified; he was pleased, and laughed grimly. "You must have followed me, after all. What do you want here, boy?"

"My girl's left me for a baron," the youth replied without raising his eyes. Eponine had not yet caught her baron or gone anywhere, but he thought it a fine thing to say. He grinned to himself, turning the wood over to see what might be salvaged of it. "I'll stay here for tonight."

"_Pardieu!_ What do I want with a thing like you?" Grantaire hung his coat on one of the pegs that served for his wardrobe. His cravat and waistcoat followed it.

"Nothing, if you've any sense." There was a warning note in the youth's voice, that Grantaire ignored as he swung around.

"You look just like him," he accused. "He's not dead, and already he haunts me." The room was small, and in two steps Grantaire reached the bed and caught the thief by surprise, gripping his knife-arm - his left - roughly. Montparnasse found his collar similarly seized and himself unpleasantly compelled to meet the man's glare. "And I am tired of it," Grantaire enunciated, in that moment more mad than drunk. "You know what I want."

In a second Montparnasse wrenched his arm from the madman's grip. His blue eyes iced over and the knife flashed; the fop submerged in an instant under the cutthroat. "Nothing doing," he snapped. "I can find another girl."

"But I don't want one. I want him." Grantaire sized up Montparnasse's admittedly frilly blouse, his well-cut trousers, and - just perhaps - the thin soles of his boots. "You'll do," he said dismissively.

And the boy should be at his throat now, but was only regarding him coolly. He slid to the edge of the bed, then stood with a manner almost elegant, were it not so common. "If you want it, you will." Montparnasse unbuttoned his trousers with practiced skill. His face was remote, and held a look of vague interest in the act - and contempt for whoever might be performing it.

Grantaire met his eyes, laughed again. He moved closer, but instead of kneeling, shoved the thief back. The youth staggered, and the drunkard knocked him off his feet with a move not practiced in gymnasium. Montparnasse was left sprawled on the bed again, trousers caught not far above his knees. "D'you think I'll kneel to the likes of you, boy? I don't like your knife so well," Grantaire sneered, looming. The height felt wrong to him, too used to people in cafes shaking him awake and telling him to go home. Still, he leaned over the prone figure, pinning him inexpertly. Montparnasse had by this time recovered his knife.

The assassin threw an arm around his attacker's neck, lips parting, teeth bared. From there it went to blows, more pointed violence, and acts best not spoken of.

_ _ _

Grantaire, when once again steeped in the seditious talk in the Musain, was inclined to forget the assassin altogether. Prodigious amounts of alcohol no doubt helped to obscure the memory. When he thought of it, he felt a rueful astonishment, and a vague gratitude towards the boy. He seemed to have drawn out some venom Grantaire was scarcely aware of, and left him once more appreciative of the Amis' company, and Enjolras's fine voice and ridiculous fervor. Cynicism attributed this lassitude to blood-loss, and doubted that the cure was worth the expense of new linens. But in the warmth of his friends' companionship, and their leader's fire, and not least a quantity of wine, Grantaire's abused bedsheets and person seemed a minor consideration.

The thief Montparnasse spent still less time pondering the affair. He had not come out the worse, or not so much that he felt any need for revenge. But any further peace eluded him: within a week he killed two men to settle his tailor's bill.


	3. Working on a Revolution

Grantaire raised numbed fingers to unbutton his collar, shucking his jacket off altogether. He curled up with it, and Enjolras pulled his own pillow away, propped it against the wall. He straightened and shot a dark look at Courfeyrac and Bahorel, hovering in the doorway, drunk and unsteady themselves. Courfeyrac had the sense to look ashamed, and started to ask again if, only for a few hours. "Just get out of here," Enjolras ordered, to forestall whatever lack-brain apology he hadn't the patience for. With more muttered apologies, they slipped away. Enjolras bolted the door again, resolved to return to his studies and simply ignore the drunkard until morning.

Grantaire had opened his trousers, was fumbling there. Enjolras favored him with a withering glare that the man, eyes closed and scarcely conscious, could not properly appreciate. Before he could muster the words to combat yet another pointless and debasing vice, Grantaire rolled onto his back, hand falling away from its half-hearted stimulation to lie at his side. Enjolras set his jaw, and after a moment's hesitation, he descended upon Grantaire, tidying the insensate man up with sharp, impersonal movements, as one tending to a stranger's corpse. Straightened his collar, re-buttoned him without quite watching what he was doing.

Enjolras then turned his back decisively, eyes on the inch of candle still burning at his desk, trying to retrace his interrupted rhetoric before he could lose it in the waiting stacks of notes and books. /_The ideal of Liberty, held dear by the People even under the worst despot... but too often confused, by rich and poor alike, with liberties and still worse license._/ That wasn't right; and the inspiration for the theme's alteration was all too present. There weren't so many hours left in the night (he had lost track, before Bahorel started beating down his door) and the man was dead drunk anyway. But he had been working, and working well; now he could not. A quiet sigh behind him, then nothing; they'd said he would only sleep. Enjolras sank to the nearest furniture - the edge of the mattress and tried to recall his original thought. /_Liberty, once held dear..._/ The drunkard lying only a little behind him crossed his mind not at all.

Grantaire, by some feat of will, raised a hand to place it just above the bend of Enjolras's elbow. "Put the lights out," he muttered. There was only the candle on the desk, and a very little light from the open window. Enjolras shook his head, at the interruption and the elusive phrase that had been so obvious an hour previous. Grantaire receded again into quiet mutterings, and then only the heat and slight pressure of his hand.

Enjolras took his wrist then, lifting the dead weight off his arm. His mind remained elsewhere, his eyes on the desk and its inch of candle, and the drunk in a middling stupor. His fingers hesitated over a healing cut, and Enjolras turned the hand then, curious. Unbuttoned his shirt-cuff to trace the wound where it trailed off on Grantaire's forearm, crisscrossed by other slashes. Grantaire blinked at him, turning a little, mute as Enjolras traced the haphazard markings with a fingertip and a puzzled frown.

The liquor and low light deprived Grantaire of a clear sense of Enjolras's face, but numbed the still-healing cuts to a nearly pleasurable twinge when Enjolras scraped at them. He could have no idea, naturally, and Grantaire indulged in a vague fantasy of enlightening him. Presently Enjolras satisfied his curiosity, determining - what? Fastened Grantaire's none-too-clean shirt cuff again and placed his hand back at his side. Next he'd have a blanket pulled over him and be expected to sleep the night through. Enjolras shifted forward, trying to stand without disturbing Grantaire's stupor.

The drunkard forced his eyes open again, laughed a little. "There's more, Apollo. Lost interest?"

The so-called god turned towards him sharply, startled and then merely annoyed by the mortal's persistence. "It was a fight," he said with certainty. "Unless you fell on your own bottle."

"Well. Something like a fight," Grantaire said with an effort. There were silly boys who threw themselves in the river, drank poison, talked of nothing but death. He was a fool who asked death in for a quick tumble, and at present could not recall his apparent host's name.

"Too hot here for this," Grantaire continued, when it seemed he was alone in the conversation. He raised himself cumbrously and set to undoing his shirt again. Enjolras looked on in some dismay, before the scarring caught his attention again. "How did you get so many?" he asked, interrogating. And before he could think, he was pinned to the mattress, bent backwards with the drunkard's full weight on his shoulders, gasping for air.

Grantaire regarded him solemnly, speaking clearly. "He was quicker than you." A mere arms-length away. His eyes were wider now, flickering quickly over his captive. Without conscious thought, Enjolras jerked and was pushed back harshly, pinned with an arm across his chest and a hand at his throat. He grimaced at the smell of wine and worse, but could not catch a breath deep enough to hold, nor throw the drunkard off. Grantaire was thrown himself, perhaps too drunk to hold himself up properly certainly too close. Enjolras looked away, held himself very still until he could slow his breath and his heart stopped pounding.

Enjolras's skin was cool where it touched Grantaire's; no guessing whether the boy's blood ran hot or cold. Grantaire watched entranced as the half-imagined flush faded from the boys features, and met Enjolras's gaze shamelessly when he deigned to give the drunkard his attention again. "Marble again," he marveled, taking care with the words. "You'd never understand, but...you see how, maybe," he added as an apology, and crossed the last space to kiss Enjolras's cheek, chastely. Almost certain he could keep his promise this once, he rolled away and made a valiant effort at standing. "I'll go."


	4. Neither Past Nor Future

Neither Past Nor Future

Montparnasse mingles unwillingly with the Latin Quarter's paupers and consumptives. Two nights back a job went wrong - he had a full purse, but they'd all agreed to stay out of sight and trouble for a week. All very well for Claquesous, perhaps; but too dull for Montparnasse, who kept lodgings but lived in Paris. Two days cooped up (in the bare room that isn't fit for company) was long enough.

But the students! Their cheerful admissions of meals skipped, flats abandoned, as though poverty were some proof of virtue. Perhaps it is; he doesn't wish to know. Montparnasse takes care not to be poor. He loathes the ill-fitting, threadbare clothes needed to pass for one of them; no better than a tradesman. All their haunts come with nonsensical histories, significances of this sign or that paint passed down each year. Their cafes and women are like their coats: worn out. They're only fit for pick-pocketing when the better districts are overrun with cops.

Montparnasse gives up on another wineshop - the barmaid hideous, the wine no better, the close room stifling - and stumbles out the back. Not to the street, but into a perfect din of a back-room. Dark as an ironsmith's, but loud as a theatre. He recoils, only to find himself blocked by more men trying to enter. Montparnasse steps aside wordlessly, hand on the frame to slip back through. The posture feels familiar; he realizes he's only lacking a knife to hand for it to be entirely routine. But the last man - the man he'd stop for directions, whose throat he'd cut once his friends had gone on - that man sees him and stops, hand slipping off the door's handle. "Lord - it's you, isn't it?"

Montparnasse fixes him with the blank stare most find disconcerting. "I don't know you." He truly doesn't. The man is no comrade, not a thief or a cutthroat. Some libertine, or perhaps a debauched student. He's a perfect gargoyle, but that means nothing.

The ugly man laughs, and Montparnasse's grip tightens on the knife in his pocket. "But I'm certain of you. Here - a drink! Are there any more glasses?" Incredibly, Montparnasse finds himself towed in.

"Oh, he's alright, Enjolras - one of your abaisse. I know him." And the man laughs again. He was drunk already, Montparnasse realizes. But he follows the man's gaze to see the 'Enjolras'. A pale boy who'd stood up from the corner with a sour look like an old judge, ready to say 'guilty' and go to his supper. Montparnasse sneers, and turns his back to sit.

"It's Grantaire, by the way." Montparnasse only nods. It's the constrained way Grantaire sits down - half-healed cuts pull, Montparnasse has reason to know - that finally reminds him. He smirks and raises a glass.

Grantaire flips all the dominoes, starts a new game, and Montparnasse plays along.

Sitting in the middle, his chair keeps being jarred by a bald man and he can't entirely ignore the din. He watches the door and Grantaire, he realizes, can see the boy at the corner table. Montparnasse could tell him it's ridiculous, but only puts down a piece and kicks under the table, vicious, to get his attention.

The blond firebrand - who had briefly regaled the entire room with even more senseless noise, during which time Montparnasse cheated without shame or subtlety - raps on the table to clear them out. Montparnasse leaning back against the wall, careful to watch the the entire room and unconfident of his ability to notice the gendarme should he approach.

It's time to go.

"Very well, very well," says his sponsor, glancing at him. "I suppose I'll have to take my young friend here as well."

Montparnasse meets the firebrand's eyes this time, catches the narrowing when he asks if Grantaire's 'young friend' has a name. So he rises fluidly from the bench, conscious of his old, drab coat. "Montparnasse." Extends his hand with a razor-sharp smile. Another flash of discomfort or disbelief; the man he'd cut up and screwed starting to stand, but he hardly matters now.

Montparnasse presses his advantage, tightens his grip on the blond boy's hand - then steps in to kiss him, open mouthed. He leans into it, giving them all a show. A hand close at Enjolras's neck to keep him still; dropping the boy's hand to get to his coat pocket. Then steps back and laughs - at the stunned man who's just some other kind of fraud. At the poor gargoyle, flushed and muttering some apology, some 'too much to drink'. Both of them - all of them - fools. "No, no - I've had my fill of nonsense. I'll take my leave - goodnight!"

He finds the door and the street at last, his head swimming. 


End file.
